Pakistani American Journalist Amna Nawaz makes history in US
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NEW YORK: Pakistani American Journalist Amna Nawaz makes history in the United States Presidential election.
Amna Nawaz, an upcoming Pakistani-American journalist, has been selected to moderate a US presidential debate, the first woman of South Asian origin to win this honour, according to media reports.
Ms. Nawaz, 40, a senior correspondent for the Public Broadcasting Service news programme “NewsHour” senior national correspondent, along with Judy Woodruff, PBS anchor and managing editor, and colleague PBS NewHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, and Politico chief political correspondent Tim Alberta, will co-moderate the sixth Democratic primary debate, scheduled for Dec. 19 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.
Amna is the daughter of Shuja Nawaz, a former Pakistan Television (PTV) journalist and currently a Distinguished Fellow, South Asia Center, at Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank.
Ms. Nawaz, who joined PBS NewsHour in April 2018, besides serving as its senior national correspondent is also its primary substitute anchor.
Prior to joining the NewsHour, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s digital coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Before that, she served as a foreign correspondent at NBC News, reporting from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, and the broader region.
She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian-America platform, built to elevate the voices of America’s fastest-growing population.
At the NewsHour, Nawaz has reported politics, foreign affairs, education, climate change, culture and sports. Her immigration reporting has taken her to multiple border communities in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. She’s investigated the impact of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies, including following the journey of a single toddler as she left her home in Mexico, was separated from her family at the U.S. border, and later reunited with her family several weeks later. She also regularly covers issues around detention, refugees and asylum, and migrant children in U.S. government custody.
Earlier, at NBC News, her work appeared on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, Dateline NBC, MSNBC, and MSNBC.com.
She was NBC’s Islamabad Bureau Chief and Correspondent for several years, and was the first foreign journalist allowed inside North Waziristan. She covered the Taliban attack on Malala Yousafzai, the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, and broke news in a series of exclusive reports on the impact of U.S. drone strikes. Ms. Nawaz reported for the network’s investigative unit, covering the U.S. housing crisis and the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill, and also covered the election and inauguration of Barack Obama, the earthquake in Haiti, and Hurricane Katrina.
Ms. Nawaz has also been honoured with an Emmy Award for the NBC News Special “Inside the Obama White House,” a Society for Features Journalism Award, and was a recipient of the International Reporting Project fellowship in 2009.
She’s an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania–where she earned a bachelor’s degree, majoring in politics, philosophy and economics, and also where she captained the varsity field hockey team—and the London School of Economics—from where she received her master’s degree majoring in comparative politics.
